Breast Injections

Fat injections in the breasts have always been taboo, because large globules of fat can calcify and resemble cancerous tumors on mammograms. But recently, Roger Khouri, a former professor of plastic surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, used tiny needles to inject study subjects with microdroplets of their own fat after priming breasts with a suction device to increase blood supply. Six months later, MRIs found 90 percent of the fat still present with only minimal calcifications, which were detectable as noncancerous. Miami plastic surgeon Thomas Baker, who presented the data to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, said the result "feels and looks like a normal breast." Still, not everyone is ready to embrace fat injections. While Tom Biggs, clinical professor of plastic surgery at Houston's Baylor College of Medicine, likes the idea of using the body's own tissue, he says, "only time will tell whether this new technique yields false positives on mammograms."